A New Renaissance

I have an unshakable belief that another Renaissance is in us—a rebirth of cultural values and modes of living that will arise from a bold, new flowering of that which is best in us: the urge to connect, to create, to collaborate, and to love.

I have an unshakable belief that another Renaissance is in us—a rebirth of cultural values and modes of living that will arise from a bold, new flowering of that which is best in us: the urge to connect, to create, to collaborate, and to love.

Our capacities as human beings are enormous, evolving, and expanding.

Think about the people we were a hundred years ago.

Fifty years ago.

We can hardly conceive who we will be even a few decades from now, when everything is wirelessly inter-connected, including our brains.

Though our future will be weighted with horrible, self-inflicted catastrophes of every variety, there can be diminishing instances of them coupled with ever-increasing acts of good.

Despite the dystopian futures that haunt our storytelling, I can’t help but believe that our best years are ahead of us.

Some may call my beliefs utopian, but I disagree. We've come a long, evolutionary way from our distant past, and our pace is quickening.

Sagacity, decency, and creative cooperation are what it will take to shape a better future, and these are not impossible achievements, not for a person and not for a world.

I see solarpunk as a kind of dystopian antidote with the power to evoke feelings of awe (of what we're capable of), fascination (by what we can do with it), encouragement (to be a force for good), and hope (for ourselves and our future).

Solarpunk has the power to rouse us out of apathy, eliciting reality-based concern as opposed to dystopian-based trepidation or desensitization.

I share the vision that inspired the creation of ASU’s Center for Science & Imagination. As one of its project leaders, Brian David Johnson, has said, “We can change the future by changing the story we tell ourselves about the future we are going to live in.”